Posts

Showing posts from October, 2020

Ubiquiti/Unifi Alternatives

 If you are also not loving the direction Ubiquiti has been heading in lately, and are frustrated with their schizophrenic approach to product development, support, and code review, take a look at these alternatives. Aruba InstantOn (Switches & WAPs only) https://www.arubainstanton.com/ Engenius Cloud (Switches & WAPs only) https://www.engeniustech.com/engenius-cloud/overview-cloud-networking https://www.engeniustech.com/engenius-cloud/hardware TP-Link Omada SDN (Switches, WAP's, & one router) https://www.tp-link.com/us/omada-sdn/ Zyxel Nebula (Switches, WAPs, and Gateways) https://nebula.zyxel.com/ https://www.zyxel.com/solutions/Nebula-Commercial-Cloud-Networking-Solution-20161018-771782.shtml https://www.zyxel.com/us/en/solutions/Nebula-Commercial-Cloud-Networking-Solution-20180220-169563.shtml PlasmaCloud (former OpenMesh engineers) https://www.plasma-cloud.com/ Tanaza (Cloud wireless controller - AP agnostic) https://www.tanaza.com/

VPN Server Resources

 Need to setup remote access to your home network/lab, or want to build a mesh network to connect with family or friends for file sharing or gaming?  If so, take a look at these projects! Free / Open Source Solutions WireGuard -  https://www.wireguard.com/ ZeroTier -  https://www.zerotier.com/ OpenVPN -  https://openvpn.net/ SoftEther VPN -  https://www.softether.org/ FreeLAN -  https://www.freelan.org/ tinc -  https://www.tinc-vpn.org/ VPN Gate (VPN Server List) -  https://www.vpngate.net/en/ Commercial Solutions Todyl -  https://www.todyl.com/ Perimeter81 -  https://www.perimeter81.com/ CloudFlare One -  https://www.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/

LSI SAS Controller Flashing (2020 Update)

 For flashing an LSI-based SAS controller in 2020, especially on newer hardware, can be challenging.  Many of the resources/guides are many years old and were written before UEFI support. I recently needed to re-flash two 9211 controllers and found these helpful https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/how-to-flashing-lsi-sas-hba-controller-efi-uefi.78457/ https://www.tfir.io/easiest-way-to-flash-lsi-sas-9211-8i-on-motherboards-without-efi-shell/ Mount USB and Flash Card: Mount fs0  (fs0 = USB drive alias, yours may be different.  Use devices -b or map-b to see list) fs0: dir Sas2flsh.efi -listall sas2flash.efi -o -e 6 sas2flash.efi -o -f image.bin -b mptsas2.rom Reprogram card address: sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxx   (x = numbers for card SAS address, can be found on back of card) reset   (reboot system)

Web Security via DNS

 There are a number of great free DNS offerings to help keep yourself and your family safe while browsing the Internet in 2020.  With the growing threat of ransomware and bad actors taking advantage of COVID and WFH, it is critical to keep your home network safe from these threats. Here's my list of my "favorites" - simply update your home router and/or devices to use these IP's for DNS lookups. CloudFlare DNS IP's  ( https://cloudflare-dns.com/ ) No Blocking Primary DNS: 1.1.1.1 Secondary DNS: 1.0.0.1 Malware Blocking Only Primary DNS: 1.1.1.2 Secondary DNS: 1.0.0.2 Malware and Adult Content Primary DNS: 1.1.1.3 Secondary DNS: 1.0.0.3 Quad9 DNS IP's ( https://www.quad9.net/ ) Primary DNS: 9.9.9.9 Secondary DNS: 149.112.112.112 OpenDNS ( https://use.opendns.com/ ) Primary DNS: 208.67.222.222 Secondary DNS: 208.67.220.220 CleanBrowsing DNS Filters ( https://cleanbrowsing.org/filters ) We have 3 free content filters available via IPv4 and IPv6. Choose the one th